July 2015

Looking for winter weirdness 2014

There has been some stuff in the past 2 months that could be linked to erratic jet stream behaviour - which in turn could be influenced by Arctic sea ice loss - like a series of storms battering Europe's Northwest, such as the St. Jude storm at the end of October, followed in December by Xaver, Dirk and Erich. Or a huge part of Siberia being so anomalously not-cold that it helped November being the warmest on record globally.

Now we have this:

This funny image (though what it depicts isn't funny for people who live in the US) from Greg Laden's blog shows how a portion of the polar vortex has broken off and moved over to the US, bringing ultra-low temperatures and snow to the Midwest and Northeast. Just two weeks ago there was a winter heat wave on the US East Coast, now it's extremely cold, and who knows what' swings will follow in weeks to come.

Like Andrew Freedman wrote over at Climate Central a couple of days ago:

The cause of the Arctic outbreak can be traced to northeastern Canada and Greenland, where an area of high pressure and relatively mild temperatures is set to block the eastward progression of weather systems, like an offensive lineman protecting the quarterback from the other team.

Here's an animation of that high pressure area (that incidentally also causes something of a cracking event in the Beaufort Sea, but more on that later):

And while it's cold in the US, today Europe has had to deal with another one of these (hat-tip to Desdemona Despair):

This, of course, led to flooding in Ireland and the UK. And it's not over yet.

Plenty of extreme weather to go round, although it's relatively warm here in Austria and records are broken in the Netherlands (should get colder in a week or so). As always, there's no direct link to anything, and so it could all just be one big coincidence. Until it isn't.

Expect More Frequent Extreme Cold (and Hot) Weather

Climate scientist and leading expert on Arctic climate change, Jennifer Francis, says that while she would not attribute the current cold that's gripping the US to global warming, it is consistent with what she expects from global warming. I spoke with Francis this weekend about the connections she sees between weather, the jet stream, and climate change.

In many respects “the jet stream really is what creates our weather” here in North America, she said, adding that there's a “very amplified pattern to the jet stream” right now, “meaning that it's taking these huge swings northward and southward. And whenever that happens is when we get these unusual warm and cold events anytime of the year.”

As an example of how a very amplified pattern can cause warm extremes, she pointed out that Finland is experiencing very warm weather for this time of year because of a big swing that has persisted in the jet there, but in the opposite direction as the one that's causing the North American cold outbreak.

Finnish news Yle reports “the exceptionally mild winter has persuaded many birds to stick around in Finland for longer than usual. Some small birds have even started to tweet spring songs.” In another story, they report that a “snow shortage” has driven ski vacationers away from the slopes and instead to the spas and swimming pools.

Francis said a certain frequency of very amplified jet stream occurrences is normal, but that global warming is causing the frequency to rise beyond normal. The main effect of an amplified jet stream pattern is to increase the occurrence of floods, droughts, heat waves, and, you guessed it: cold spells.¹

The driving mechanism behind the jet stream is the north-south air temperature gradient, and that gradient is being strongly impacted by what's called “Arctic amplification,” a consequence of global warming which is very much underway already. Shrinking Arctic sea ice, less snow cover on land in spring and summer, and more moisture in the air, to name just a few, are all primary consequences and feedbacks pushing the Arctic to warm even faster and thus to further amplify the jet stream pattern.

But as we saw last month this subject is so fresh that it cannot be but controversial in scientific circles. Take for instance this piece by Emily Atkin on ClimateProgress:

Francis’ research, however, is still disputed. Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, a distinguished senior climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told ClimateProgress on Monday that he was skeptical of Francis’ assessment.

“Jennifer’s work shows a correlation, but correlation is not causation,” he cautioned. “In fact it is much more likely to work the other way around.”

Instead of Francis’ theory that a warm Arctic moves the jet stream, Trenberth said it could be that the jet stream moves, leading to a warmer Arctic. And Francis’ theory could work if the Arctic was, in fact, particularly warm and iceless — at the moment, in winter, the Arctic is cooler and icier.

“I am not saying there is no [climate change] influence, but in midwinter, the energy in these big storms is huge and the climate change influence is impossible to find statistically,” he said. “So we have to fall back on understanding the processes and mechanisms.”

And what about the influence of Sudden Stratospheric Warmings that ASIB commenter and guest blogger R. Gates wrote about at length last year? Chief meteorologist of NBC Charlotte, Brad Panovich, announced this cold outbreak over a week ago, basing himself on the stratospheric warming in play (hat-tip to Susan Anderson):

The SSW event is still in progress, and is discussed by several commenters here on the ASIB.

A lot of different things are simultaneously at play and it's not entirely clear what is influencing what. But we do know that we are witnessing some more pretty extreme weather. Not just average extreme weather - even an alarmist like me gets bored by it - but more the top of the bill stuff. I wish we had a pause.

Here in Winnipeg, it got down to -38 C yesterday, which is cold. But I am not sure I buy the relation to sea ice. Currently, Arctic Sea Ice is not much below normal, and last summer was one of the highest levels in a few years, so why the record breaking weather now? Shouldn't the effect of sea ice melting be more pronounced in the late summer/fall when the anomalies are greatest?

I see several consistent patterns that seem to be developing as the northern hemisphere temperature differential driving force falls.

1) The jet streams stabilize over the asian continent (old pattern)
2) A large body of added oceanic warmth has developed and persisted off of the west coast of the U.S. centered about 135 degrees longitude. This is creating a blocking pattern in the atmosphere.
3) The jets encounter this block and are forced to go mostly north, but sometimes south of the block. In years gone by, this lead to deluge rains in Los Angeles.
4) This diversion then creates an oscillation that ripples across North America and Europe driving the deep oscillations and intrusions of arctic air down over the continent, and very warm air up into Alaska.
5) This is then causing the polar and main jets to merge for much of the journey around the pole.
6) This also leads to new circulations over Canada, Greenland and Europe driving more heat northward and more cold southward in cycles.
7) This also stabilizes the frequency plot of undulations in the jet.
8) There appears to be a similar though weaker blocking pattern developing over the mid north - to north Atlantic.
9) This is driving lots of cold and rain into England and lots of heat into Scandinavia.
10) Finally over central Europe, the continental land mass and southern mountains stabilize the flows again to return back to the Pacific with intense cold over eastern Siberia.
11) There also appears to be another ripple that pulls warmth northward over the Bering straits.
12) This also seems to be driving all sorts of weather changes across the continental U.S. and Europe.

Am I seeing things? Or is this a real and developing pattern?

Is the oceanic warmth in the northeastern Pacific also then the reason for the many wild changes we have seen in the ocean ecosystems there? E.g. the huge sardine explosion and mammals and birds in California waters, coupled with the starfish die off from Oregon north into Canadian waters.

I have watched the El Nino/La Nina cycle for almost 20 years now. In the last 15 years something odd has happened quite often.

El Nino shows up as warm oceans off the South American coast that then moves in Kelvin waves Westward across the pacific until it crashes into Asia. As this relatively hot band develops, two cold bands develop with it at the tropics.

La Nina does the opposite. Cold spreads across the equator, and warmth spreads in a band at the tropics.

In the last 15 years, often the northern band has failed to respond. Rather than being cold with El Nino and warm with La Nina, it has been warm with both.

This has to be connected to the northern hemisphere heating and the polar melt in some way.

The traditional indices don't capture this, as they monitor the equator only.

Great post Neven. This polar vortex strangeness is quite interesting, and I tend to side with Dr. Francis on the elongation of the Rossby wave activity, but the connection to SSW events and the Brewer-Dobson circulation seems to be totally missed by many experts. Climate models have long forecast an enhancement to the Brewer-Dobson circulation, and part of this enhancement would be a relationship to more SSW events as more energy is moving high in the stratosphere and even the mesopshere. These waves break on the troposphere and cause the warming "bubbles" that move toward the poles. While we've not had a major SSW event yet from the current squeezing and elongation of the Arctic vortex, we have had this cold pulse squeezed out of the Arctic by a warm pulse pushing it from mesospheric and stratospheric levels. Anyone can readily watch this pulse move up at 10 hPa over the past few days: (watch over Asia beginning about Dec. 25-26, as the warm pulse grows rapidly and moves toward the north)

As I pointed out in my SSW post last year, as this wave begins to push down over the pole and squeeze and disrupt the polar vortex, simultaneously at the equator, the air is rising and cooling, and this represents a 9000km teleconneted event that is both a massive amount of energy, and confirms global climate models predictions of an enhancement to the Brewer-Dobson Circulation as GH gases increase.

HI Neven , that warm North Pacific spot has been around for a long time , scroll check on my blog : http://eh2r.blogspot.ca/ the october 6 article entitled "Clouds major play......"

The term "Polar Vortex" is misplaced. A Polar Vortex is near the Poles. What has transpired was created in the Sub-Arctic and was moved by a series of Vortex zones I call Cold Temperature North Poles. The one over Hudson Bay moved over South Central Quebec, it was a cold zone with a counterclockwise flow at its perimeter, the one in Quebec help created the jet to bend towards Minnesota , moving and creating the current CTNP once over Illinois, the CTNP over Illinois helped shape the Jet so Montreal was well above +6 C, and should introduce not so cold subarctic weather from the West leading up to +2 C temperature in Chicago come Friday.

In brief the Jet stream is a major player, but what shapes it even a bigger and more important, surely Ireland and UK will feel a respite from this cold air spinning in North America.

I believe that one or a combination of the following is responsible for the significant shift in weather patterns between 2012 to 2013:

1. China's air pollution
2. China's cloud seeding to reduce local smog
3. A covert government global dimming project in the tropics designed to reduce the expansion of the Hadley Cell into the U.S. Midwest as was experienced in March 2012.

Most significantly, if a global dimming project was put into place at the beginning of 2013, the primary satellite that would have been able to detect such a project mysteriously failed in December of 2012.

The negative PNA-like pattern in
G1-piControl is associated with a westward shift of the jet stream toward East Asia, blocking activity over the high latitudes of the North Pacific Ocean, and a strong split-flow configuration over the central North Pacific Ocean. Figure 7 displays these features with a decreased jet speed over central, west Pacific region (with across-model differences, SI Fig. 7), and the 200hPa geopotential height map also shows a “blocking” high pressure over the northern North Pacific under G1.

Bering and Okotsch ice is highly volatile, and while certainly affected by current conditions, doesn't strike me as definitive. The open water north of Alaska and fracturing strike me as more significant. While any one local state on its own is indistinguishable from natural variation, the *assemblage* *is*:

- Low ice coverage in the Okotsch and Bering
- Increased Fram export
- Fracturing and open water in the Beaufort
- Continued winter export of ice through Nares strait
- Persistent open water and heat around Svalbard
- Mostly ice-free Barents Sea
- Unusually high snow coverage on the ice
- persistent high temperature anomalies across the region
- generally low resistance to wind and mobility in the pack at large.

Snow coverage is quite below average in much of Europe and the western US. This set-up is similar to 2007 and 2012 when snow was also below-average in Europe. NOAA's model ensemble at CFS also implies a much warmer-than-average late winter/early spring for Europe, which I guess could hasten whatever snow is present in Scandinavia and western Russia. Too early to say where 2014 maximum will sit, but it's already looking like a low-ball, and the lack of snow is not a good omen for protection of ice this summer. We shall see, being that it is only January.

I have updated the blog post with a mention of SSWs and some other views on this jet stream stuff. Boy, there's a lot of disparate info out there. I wonder what it'll all boil down to in a couple of years.

Jai Mitchell try doing a little research before posting conspiracy theories. I live in China and no one is going to be doing any significant cloud seeding, there are no clouds at this time of year to seed. this is the dry season and has been for two months. the local government has a truck fleet that spends 12 hours a day 7 days a week watering the public road side trees and plants. When it last rained it rained continuously for 48 hours and that was a whole months rain. the average in this part of China during November/December is 2in per month. I never dreamed that I would be praying for rain but I am, the pollution sucks and it is far worse in the north. there is talk of cloud seeding in 2 years time but is is just talk.

From http://robsobsblog.blogspot.ca/ "That Iqaluit storm is one of the most intense storms I've ever seen in my 30 years following meteorology. To give you an idea how intense this storm is.. a meteorological "bomb" is defined as a storm which exhibits explosive deepening at the rate of 24 mb within 24 hours. The pressure at Iqaluit has dropped 36 mb within the past 12 hours.. so it's intensifying at 3 times the rate of a bomb. I've never seen a storm do that to that degree. Absolutely jaw dropping stuff. I suspect this may be the worst storm on record for Iqaluit with lots of damage."

Oh, man, that's a blowtorch of comparatively warm, moist air being played straight onto the eastern CAA.

I have been nosing around through old posts for images from the last fracturing event in the Beaufort. This year's seems to be starting out as severe, and six weeks earlier. Increased circulation won't help.

Any one know where archived Canadian weather service satellite images live?

A series of strong storms in the westerlies off the coast of North America have undercut the high pressure along the coast with heavy warm rains on the way with snow levels mostly above 1800 meters elevation. These storms appear to be staying north of a strong lobe of this high pressure over California. The high pressure is forecast to reform next week so this rain probably won't last too long.

Any way, I read the paper, and it is well written, clearly explained, thorough, it's results makes a lot of sense, and it does put some (significant?) constraints on Dr. Francis claims.

Dr. Francis actually did put a comment in Cliff's blog on the Barnes paper.

I also put in a comment, where I describe my opinion of the differences and common findings of both papers, and mention Neven's blog to Dr.Francis, as one site where we would love to have a longer discussion about blocking patterns, Rossby waves, and extreme weather events.

I hope that comments gets through Cliff's moderation today, but if not, I'll post it in full tomorrow.

With reference to the main image at the top of this entry showing part of the polar vortex breaking off and moving down on the North American side, I was just scanning views on Wunderground and noticed that the cold on the Siberian side is quite impressive right now as well with -55 - -60C in central Siberia:

Which on New Year's Eve was deformed so that it looked a bit like a love heart. I'd prefer not to say what I think it looks like now. I think it "should" look like a tight circle, which corrals the polar vortex, but I really don't know.

I would not be prepared to bet against the blue "eye" in the middle splitting in two in the near future, which AFAIK, would be very odd.

Idunno, I have been following this deformed system for over a week, but at the 10hPa level. My take is that the cyclonic stretched portion over the pole is being reinforced by anti-cyclonic systems over the North Pacific and North Atlantic. Perhaps ocean energy venting from lower latitude is the driving force. No idea if this is common or not.

Even though few people live in the western tropical Pacific Ocean, these remote waters affect billions of people by shaping climate and air chemistry worldwide. Next week, leading scientists will head to the region to better understand its influence on the atmosphere—including how that may change in coming decades if storms over the Pacific become more powerful with rising global temperatures.

With the warmest ocean waters on Earth, the western tropical Pacific fuels a sort of chimney whose output has global reach. The region feeds heat and moisture into huge clusters of thunderstorms that loft gases and particles into the stratosphere, where they spread out over the entire planet and influence the climate.

I took the liberty of using this graph in a second post on Cliff Mass' blog, who responded rather dismissive to my first comment, which was what I intended to be a applause of the constructive scientific debate on in the two papers on the issue of Arctic amplification in relation to extreme weather events.

Since Cliff Mass did not even respond to Dr. Francis comment, and dismisses mine with the remark "You could not have read these papers very carefully", I'm not so sure if Cliff Mass is interested in engaging in any scientific debate.

Not a Historic Cold Wave
As notable as this week's cold wave was--bringing the coldest air seen since 1996 or 1994 over much of the nation--the event failed to set any monthly or all-time record low minimum temperature records at airports and cooperative observing stations monitored by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. As wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt summed it up for me, "The only significant thing about the cold wave is how long it has been since a cold wave of this force has hit for some portions of the country--18 years, to be specific. Prior to 1996, cold waves of this intensity occurred pretty much every 5-10 years. In the 19th century, they occurred every year or two (since 1835). Something that, unlike the cold wave, is a truly unprecedented is the dry spell in California and Oregon, which is causing unprecedented winter wildfires in Northern California." Part of the reason that this week's cold wave did not set any all-time or monthly cold records is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so in a warming climate. As Andrew Freedman of Climate Central wrote in a blog post yesterday, "While the cold temperatures have been unusual and even deadly, climate data shows that intense cold such as this event is now occurring far less frequently in the continental U.S. than it used to. This is largely related to winter warming trends due to man-made global warming and natural climate variability." For example, in Detroit during the 1970s, there were an average of 7.9 nights with temperatures below zero. But this decade, that number has been closer to two nights.

I didn't see that blocking frequence graph yet and plan to give it some more attention. The info in the posts on the seasonal aspects of wave-pattern behaviour may help me in the interpretation of the 10-day pattern changes I'm after. Until now I focused on the geographical spread.
On your blog-attempts; I guess the position of Prof. Mass, on a scale of reticence, could be referred to as 'very cautious', of Dr. Francis maybe 'alert' and Dr. Hansen 'alarmed'. I find Mass' response to your post a bit 'high-handed'. On Realclimate you can read his response to Hansens' work on the PNAS/Perception of CC-paper 2012. That response expresses the same caution in Mass' approach. And his willingness to compare apples to pears. IMO not very helpful when decisive action on GHG-reduction is badly needed.

4. The graphic of the Lupo information appears to miss the significant increase of blocking patterns observed in the north pacific (-150W). I would be suspicious of potential selection bias within that data itself.

The distinct warm pool in the North Pacific is very curious and is almost certainly related to the highly persistent geopotential height ridging (i.e. the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge") that is ongoing in and east of the same region. It's not entirely clear whether this is a case of the ocean forcing the atmosphere or the other way around, but it's most likely a self-reinforcing process either way and now that the warm pool exists it is likely contributing to the incredible persistence of the ridge.

California has really been suffering as a result of this pattern--there have been no major storms whatsoever over the past 13 months and what little rain has fallen has mostly been associated with colder systems taking an unusual track from the north or even northeast. 2013 was the driest year in California in at least 119 year and probably a lot longer than that, since some places exceeded their previous driest year on record by ~50%. I've been following this on Weather West (http://www.weatherwest.com), though I suppose it might be time for a new post now that we're in the new year and this pattern is still in place...

Rob Dekker, I am not sure why Cliff Mass was so dismissive about your comment as I have not read either paper myself and have relied on analysis by others to help understand them. I have read Cliff Mass for a considerable length of time(years) and found his blog to be informative and quite accurate which is why I provided the link to that blog in my post above on January 7 in the first place. Hopefully his dismissive comment won't deter you or others away from his blog.

Thanks VaughA.
I guess he does not like me for pointing out common ground between the Francis and Barnes papers. That's OK.

But I think I understand why he is venting a polarized view on this issue.

Observational studies of trends on blocking events and jet stream are hard, and to find correlation of these with another effect (such as Arctic amplification) are harder yet, and then we didn't even talk about causation.

Scientifically speaking we just starting with exploration of the data. After all, it's been only 15 years of so that sea ice cover started to reduce in very substantial fractions.

Thus, it is not surprising that there are many serious climate scientists (Trenberth for one) who dismiss the link between Arctic sea ice loss and extreme climate events at this point, for lack of evidence, although they keep their mind open.

But looking at Cliff's post, and the comments he gives (even disrespectfully disregarding Dr.Francis response on his own blog), it seems that Cliff has made up his mind on the issue, and is taking a very hard stand on one side.

For a scientist, it's disappointing in my view.

But since Dr. Francis' work has been highly publicized in public media, while the evidence for here theory is still rather thin and a bit fragile (just getting out of the noise) and has been pushed back again by papers like Dr.Barnes' results, it is also not entirely unexpected that he is a bit angry.

In the process, I learned something about Cliff Mass, and the entire debate about the link (or lack thereof) between global warming and extreme weather events.

Weather_West, thanks for bringing up the interesting "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge" (love the name!).

This blocking high has been sitting there for almost a year now, caused the worst drought year in California's recorded history, and it shows no sign of relief.

The SINGLE storm this raining season we had here in Northern California was a one-hour long tropical downpour (incidentally coinciding exactly with a soccer match of the U10 team I'm coaching) back in October.

This is getting indeed quite "ridiculous".

I did a bit of research, and found that interestingly enough there appears to be a "Ridiculously Resilient Trough" in the Antarctic about the same meridian, which is possibly causing extended sea ice cover around Antarctica) that's been there for almost two years now.

I have another theory about these very tortured jet streams that are bringing extreme weather to the mid latitudes.

First a caveat, while there are lot of amateur scientists on this site, I am not one of them. I am, in fact, a rank amateur.

I wonder if we are missing or, perhaps underestimating, the critical role that the Northern Hemisphere topography plays in a warming world. This topography, prior to warming already influenced climate across the planet. Thus we had specific climate features prior to the rapid ramp up of atmospheric CO2 and surface temperatures, both on land and sea. Examples of these weather features would be tornado alley in North America, the generally warmer (moister?) climate that Europe experiences despite its high latitudes, tropical storm patterns in the Pacific and Atlantic and the temperate rain forest of the northwest coast of North America which exists on the windward side of the Rockies. I am not a climatologist and I am sure they could mention hundreds more of these climate features in the Northern Hemisphere. Our current understanding forms the foundation of all of our climate models.

Some of the major topographical features that influence this climate would be the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the location of large land masses, all of the major mountain ranges and, of course, the polar region itself. These topographical features having always influenced the climate patterns that humanity experienced in a stable CO2 world.

Now, everything is changing. Surface temperatures are rising across the planet, resulting in temperature anomalies. The temperature changes are not uniform but they do have patterns that are manifesting themselves across the planet. What isn't changing is the Northern Hemisphere topography. Could these changes we are seeing be a result of this fixed topography enforcing or coercing a new climate pattern across the planet, actually influencing the jet stream?

Here is where the rank amateur comes in. I have lived in Chicago my entire life and have been an avid gardener for 40 years. I have seen dramatic shifts in the weather that has affected my planting and success with growing food but there has been a seasonal pattern (even a sort of stability) to these shifts. We are experiencing warmer winters, cooler and wetter springs, generally cooler but much drier summers and gorgeous falls that extend into early winter. I have lost entire crops of tomatoes because of ridiculously wet springs and very dry summers. I have had squash yields that have been enormous, with a growing season that extends into November. Unfortunately, these are just personal observations. I have no temperature and precipitation data to support these observations.

There are other, relatively consistent, patterns I seem to see emerging but this is simply from reading a great deal about weather across the Northern Hemisphere. The east coast of the U.S. is seeing more precipitation in the winter. Tornado alley seems to be shifting both in timing and location, the British Isles are being deluged with moisture.

My biggest fear about a warming world is this. Yes this warming world is causing weather extremes but the sticky weather we are seeing has a sticky feature to it that is a result of our fixed topography. This topography will interact with the rising surface temperatures causing a new climate regime to emerge with new patterns of highs and lows, jet stream behavior, precipitation patterns etc.

Could we possibly encounter dreadful examples of regional winners and losers across the planet and could we be closer to this reality than we realize? Is the 10 years of below average precipitation in the American Southwest be, in fact, a new climate regime emerging in this region of the world? What might the near term impact be on the agriculture and the tens of millions of people in this region as they literally run out of water? And how will Great Britain cope with persistent seasonal precipitation that threatens to wash them into the seas?

How did I arrive at this theory? I often play mind games with every problem or question I encounter. The game is to set odd "what ifs" to test the theory. With regards to the influence of topography on jets stream behavior and climate, it goes like this.

Question:

Does the fixed, variable Northern Hemisphere topography have a critical influence on the pattern of jet streams and climate?

What if:

What if the Northern Hemisphere had a topography that was absolutely uniform? If the hemisphere consisted of an absolutely smooth crust covered by a sea of uniform depth, what would climate look like on such a world? How would the oceans and atmosphere behave in such a world? Would this climate, the behavior of the jet stream and oceans, exhibit a stability that parallels the topographic stability?

It would seem to me, if the answer to the above "what if" is yes, then it is also true that the fixed topography of the Northern Hemisphere is, in fact, the single biggest contributor to climate, the jet stream patterns and weather that we all have come to expect.

The key to understanding our warming world would be to then focus our efforts on the impact that a warming world has on topography and the changing influence, the coercive effect, these changes will have on the behavior of the jet stream and ocean currents etc.

Seen in this light, the shifts in jet stream behavior are a direct result of these changes in topography interacting with a warming surface. In fact the behavior of our entire atmosphere and oceans are driven by this. Seen in this light, how might we expect the Hadley Ferrel and Polar cells to behave with an ice free Arctic or with dramatic shifts in sea surface temperatures?

Even more generally, how might a changed topography impact every atmospheric feature that we have studied and understand?

I don't understand much of what is discussed on this site, but it would seem that every single atmospheric phenomena will be subject to shifts in behavior, a result of the coercive effects of a changing topography. These shifts in atmospherics would then alter the topography which, in turn, would influence or coerce a new atmospheric regime. What are these existing atmosphere behaviors that we study?

Polar vortex, jet stream, Hadley, Ferrel and Polar cells, etc. Every one of these might be impacted.

Increasing model resolution tended to improve the simulation of present day climate, with larger improvements in areas affected by mountains and coastlines. Examination of circumstances under which increasing the resolution decreased performance revealed an error in the GCM circulation, the effects of which had been masked by the coarse GCM topography. Resolution modifications to projected changes were largest in regions with strong topographic and coastline influences, and can be large enough to change the sign of the climate change projected by the GCM.

While they are speaking specifically of the GCM used in their research, I'm sure it's true of GCMs in general. One small test of this might be to compare accuracy of weather forecasts for different areas (topographically challenging versus bland) and see if there is a significant difference in accuracy. If the weather forecasts are extremely accurate, then the local processes have to be well represented - if not, then the forecasting model is missing something.

"Part of the reason that this week's cold wave did not set any all-time or monthly cold records is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so in a warming climate. As Andrew Freedman of Climate Central wrote in a blog post yesterday, "While the cold temperatures have been unusual and even deadly, climate data shows that intense cold such as this event is now occurring far less frequently in the continental U.S. than it used to. This is largely related to winter warming trends due to man-made global warming and natural climate variability." For example, in Detroit during the 1970s, there were an average of 7.9 nights with temperatures below zero. But this decade, that number has been closer to two nights."

seems a little at odds with what was said by White House's Dr. John Holdren's (posted right next to the JeffMasters quote):

"but a growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues."

A septic might be driven to suggest that the warmists should get their story straight, is it increasing in frequency or decreasing?

Of course it isn't actually a contradiction, the pattern could occur with increasing frequency but such low temperatures occur with reduced frequency.

(It is just that reading and hearing them next to next seemed a bit strange.)

The White House is hosting Google+ Hangout discussion at 2 PM ET today with prominent scientists and meteorologists to discuss the "Polar Vortex" and how singular weather events play into the larger issue of climate change.

They'll be taking questions using the hashtag #WeTheGeeks . We hope you'll join!﻿

says a comment on the white house video.

However, judging by other comments there, I doubt it is worth trying to ask anything sensible.

Any thoughts on why they are pedalling Dr Francis' hypothesis which has been questioned in the scientific literature and suggesting increased frequency to come when they could look at frequency of such cold temperatures as Jeff Masters did demonstrating much reduced frequency of these temperatures?

Without being able to give chapter and verse, I'm fairly sure that Francis says something like "further research is needed", which could possibly also be translated as "I'm not sure the theory is right."

This issue seems to be the central battleground of the US culture wars this week; and "the first casualty of war is truth". I see Francis herself as a civilian, not a combatant, incidentally.

Shared Humanity, I think that the change in state of an ocean from solid to liquid is the biggest ongoing change of global and NH topography for 10,000 years. Where it leads, who knows.

I think the Dr Francis is wholly convinced that her theory regards larger meanders in the jet (Rossby Waves) is correct. But she seems to think that what is being detected is at the limits of detectability, although it will get stronger (comments on Barnes).

Thanks from me too, crandles. It wasn't that enlightening, but it was nice seeing James Overland in person. What I find the most interesting aspect of this whole event, is that the whole jetstream-possibly-influenced-by-AGW-stuff is now slowly slipping into the collective consciousness, where more and more people learn about this. It's all mumbled up right now, but if the jet stream keeps at it, this will become common knowledge in a couple of years.

It reminds me a bit of the 1998 El Niño. At the time I was around 24 years old working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. When I heard people talking about El Niño, I presumed it was the name of a storm. But then a couple of years later there was another El Niño and I thought: Huh, can they give two storms the same name? :-)

But then I learned. I think a lot more people nowadays know what El Niño is than before. And it will probably be the same for the polar vortex and jet stream.

I think people respect the jet stream more than they do of sea ice/global warming/al gore/climate change. It's actually measurable and impacts are felt almost directly. If the question becomes more of- " is that Jet Stream meandering more on a certain time scale, about the same or less?" The discussion turns more to "well, if the planet is warming and we are actually causing some natural imbalance- then what can I or we do about it?" Science is good. And it's better for people to try to understand our planet better.

The potential for a bad drought is looming large in California and it is a subject that is coming up almost daily.

Yes, and when we think about the Earth and it's systems , we should think about how creatures adapted to heat , just up and die in the tens of thousands.
Bats, parrots , emus , kangaroos , and God what else.

SH, being a landscape designer, I’ve noticed some pretty memorable shifts in the niches of local climate during my lifetime too.
Summarizing, I’d say the growing season has been steadily lengthening over here. This made possible to introduce plants that, backed by early twentieth century documents and books, were restricted to SW England , Normandy and Brittany.

On the topography; it would be ridiculous if I claimed to have noticed the influence of the earth’s geomorphology on climate. It was part of basic school training in geography. The illuminating side of having joined Neven’s sea ice band of bloggers is that I’ve acquired a much more general insight on the integrated pattern of all seemingly individual features.

As I’ve been collecting 10-day means for the wave-patterns between Oct and Mar ’12-’13, I’ve noticed the preferred spatial distribution of ridges west of the Rocky Mountains and the British Isles, and troughs over the American Plains and Mongolia.
No doubt these are ‘climate means’ related to topography. But it is the amplitude, both in space and time, and their strength in view of their energy-transfer that should be main focus of our concern.

The bite in this is that ‘normal features’ get rough, last different and are relocated on a synoptic scale. There are multiple examples, FI the ones you gave for tornadoes in the US. In the generally very ‘even’ climatology of The Netherlands, it is harder to point out these changes. If pushed, I’d suggest summer thunderstorms and their rain events. The intensity and spread over the year are both rising (the frequency to a lesser extent).

I’m very worried that these changes will progressively strain all kinds of economical activities up to the point they will become unsustainable.

I wonder what Barnes' blocking pattern charts would look like if 2013 was included. Does anyone know of a dataset that tracks these patterns? As you know, 2013 was a sudden sea change with cutoff lows spinning constantly in the northern hemisphere. The surf in northern California was a solid 7'swell from the northwest all summer long due to a few spinning cutoff lows that lingered throughout the JJA. This was an unprecedented event in the memory of the surf community here since the 60's. I wonder if Barnes' counted cutoff lows by incidence and not by persistence. In that case a 12-month long blocking ridge would only count as a single event.

additionally, a metric that tracks the intensity of the northern hemisphere Hadley cell would show how it became severely reduced after the summer of 2012. This as opposed to the strong expansion of the Hadley cell that is causing the heatwaves in Australia and Argentina.

As opposed to nostalgia — the melancholia or distress experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home (A.K.A. homesickness) — "solastalgia" is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.

We're suffering from "solastalgia" due to a lack of rainfall here in California.

Today was our best chance of rain for some weeks past as forecasts from two online forecasters put the odds at 70 & 80% on the last two days before Sat., then Sat. nite dropped it to 40%, then on Sat. itself dropped it to 20%. So far it has not rained a drop in our neck of the woods (in no. ca just above SF), but maybe it will drop snow on the Sierras.

Jan. 3rd the first snow pack assessment for the Sierras, which came in at 19% of normal. 5 days later it had reduced to 17%.

Tuesday is forecast to be 70F, and the next rain is a 10% chance on 1-20.

Hans, the rains have returned up this way at least for a few days. Like you say the forecast calls for dry weather again as the ridge builds back in. I had about 40" of rain in 2013 which is drier than normal...about 8" below normal. Had it not been for 1 day in August with over 4" of rain and another day in September with another 4" of rain from those cutoff lows/quasi land subtropical depressions moving in from the southeast it would have been an exceptionally dry year. At this rate winter will be over and there will only be a little bit of snow up in the mountains.

VaughnA, I saw the satellite this afternoon showing rains in Oregon and figured you were getting yours. No festivus for the rest of us down here, but still have part of Jan., Feb. & March to go. We need the impending El Nino to kick in, kick butt and fill the reservoirs.

I wonder if this will be another case of stuck weather, with El Nino kicking in next winter. We'll get so deluged there will be mudslides, etc.

A question I have is, "Will an el nino have the same effect as in the past, i.e. deluges in California, or will the persistent blocking ridge prevail?" With new weather regimes seemingly the rule more than the exception I am not really sure which way things will go anymore.
Also, according to Cryosphere Today the NH sea ice anomaly is back below 1,000,000 km^2 at -1.027m km^2.

I looked back and I see more effects from thinner sea ice, especially the OLR relation, and also a comparison between December 2013 and 1981, the December 2013 giving the Polar Vortex as opposed to 1981 having equally cold winter in Europe and North Americahttp://eh2r.blogspot.ca/

"In Australia, it used to mean drought and heat, but the last 16 months there seem to have proved that old pattern may no longer be in effect."

We won't really know until the next substantial El Nino. I, for one, am not looking forward to it.

(I've currently got our house battened down in anticipation of 5 days straight of +40C temperatures. It's now noon and it's already >38 in the city centre. We won't have an overnight temperature below about 26C for the next four nights. If any of your southern Australian friends or relatives seem a bit grumpy during this week, you'll know why.)